


seahorse

by jamnesias



Series: Prometheus [2]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, Thor (2011)
Genre: Loki Feels, M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-19
Updated: 2012-09-19
Packaged: 2017-11-14 14:47:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/516504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamnesias/pseuds/jamnesias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'There is no animal on Asgard for Loki. Not one he would choose for himself, anyhow. Horse, fish, cat-- no, no, all wrong.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	seahorse

**Author's Note:**

> A companion/follow up piece to sparkover. The first thing I wrote of Loki as I tried to get the feel of him, basically. The little shit :D

There is no animal on Asgard for Loki. Not one he would choose for himself, anyhow. Horse, fish, cat-- no, no, wrong.

Thor is obvious, of course. He is a lion, a huge dog with golden fur, a hawk. The others call him His Glory, they call him Beast, and these all seem right. But Loki cannot find his own.

The top spires of their castle are constantly encircled by enormous eagles, with wingspans that made him want to gasp when he was a child and caught a glimpse of them over the head of teachers in their lessons in the towers, gliding past the windows. Their whipsharp faces and golden feather tips like armour.

He was thirteen the first time that he managed to scale the middle spire of their home - the culmination of an idea he'd had from young childhood and a final success brought about partly through projection, re-animation and apparation and partly through sheer _luck._ He'd materialised at the top with an ingraceful **cctthunk** of smoke, clutching at the sunwarmed stone with his fingers and his bare feet on a flat ledge that ran around the widest part. A ledge that he'd quite possibly willed into being, otherwise there was no other purpose for it. He'd taken a moment, shocked into one laugh at his own sheer _audacity_.

Once he'd looked down, he couldn't look back up for--ages, eons, with  _vertigo_ and insignificance and _di i iiz z z  y_ and other foreign words whispering around the crown of his head. Snatches of voices in the high wind as if brought from other places. New worlds. He'd felt very strong and very sick. Wondered where Thor was, down there.

The cry of a bird had made him snap up and turn his head, hair whipping across his mouth in the wind. An eagle was circling, swooping before alighting next to him on the ledge. As if it had stepped off the currents of air for a moment, just to observe him back. Black cosmos-coloured feathers and metallic eyes. It had been the same size as him (then, but he is tall now-- taller than Father and taller than Thor). He hadn't known that they were so large. They were _mighty_. He thought them beautiful, cruel and wonderful and graceful - something Father wasn't, for all his strength, and even back then with blind adoration blinkering him Loki still couldn't have imagined Odin ever being _deft,_ no matter how hard he had tried. Grace was reserved for Frigga, for water, for cloth, for something... some _thing_ Thor had a little of but not the understanding or patience for how to use.

Loki fell in love with the eagle as it stared back at him. It took off with a cry that echoed around, shot down his spine, spreading its huge wings and soaring away. Such a _creature._

He chooses the eagle, then. Keeps it secret, but nurtures the idea. Sight, distance. Prowess. He learns to fight with it mind, to arc and move, to throw his magic, to duck and dive. He wants to be _fast_. He asks for vanes to be added to his Prince's armour, for barbs and feather shapes in his clothes.

It is only when he is older that he realises it is the wrong choice for him. After truths and lies and acidic, bubbling rage, once he has taken every chance with an icy, deep breath in and been kicked in shattered ribs for good measure, and after he has realised that he should have held on far more tightly and more viciously to his brother. After he _lets go._ Eagles are wrong for him. They are too distant, too driven. And they have to _land._ Making nests, eating food.

Loki will _never_ stop flying.

Later, later still, on Midgard-- _Midgard,_ for all the gods' sake. Midgard and its fractured, tiny history, that impossibly young, terrible nation of terrible opportunity _._ It isn't either of the homes he was put in or taken from, but he is so clever at adoption, picking up languages and illnesses and appearances with little effort. Guises, attributes. And animals. Animals follow him. Cats, wolves. And there is an animal there so unique that the knowledge of it stands out in his mind, for a moment. It re-surfaces when he learns the truth of his birth, before he quashes the idea.

Later, again, much later than that: hidden, swollen, curled down in a damp little cave in a planet he hasn't previously visited with something stretching furiously inside his stomach. All thoughts of eagles are gone. He is heavy, full of sorrow and wonder and-- And a child. A _something._

For all his knowledge and powers, there is the only one animal that he can think of when it happens, then. Such a tiny, insignificant creature. Shaped like a curl of smoke underwater, like a dream he didn't intentionally intrude on. A trick he didn't create, or maybe one that is being played on him. Unbelievable. And he _can't_ believe it, he cannot really be like this too. To be able to-- to make _life._ It isn't him. That can't be him.

But it is.

A tiny, insignificant creature.

The joke's on him.


End file.
